It should be noted that here and there he lost a word, as probably also did the person who was actually addressed; but the general sense of the conversation he caught quite well.
"I told you I could do it. You only want patience and resolution to take advantage of your opportunities, and a big coup is as easily carried off as a small one."
Mr. Lawrence's voice ceased. The rejoinder came from a voice which struck Mr. Paxton as being a very curious one indeed. The speaker spoke not only with a strong nasal twang, but also, occasionally, with an odd idiom. The unseen listener told himself that the speaker was probably the newest thing in races--"a German-American."
Mr. Lawrence's voice again; in it more than a suggestion of scorn.
"The assistance of a friend! When it comes to the scratch, it is on himself that a man must rely. What a friend principally does is to take the lion's share of the spoil."
"Well--why not? A man will not be able to be much of a friend to another, if, first of all, he is not a friend to himself--eh?"
Mr. Lawrence appeared to make no answer--possibly he did not relish the other's reasoning. Presently the same voice came again, as if the speaker intended to be apologetic--
"Understand me, my good friend, I do not say that what you did was not clever. No, it was damn clever!--that I do say. And I always have said that there was no one in the profession who can come near you. In your line of business, or out of it, how many are there who can touch for a quarter of a million, I want to know? Now, tell me, how did you do it--is it a secret, eh?"
If Mr. Lawrence had been piqued, the other's words seemed to have appeased him.
"Not from you--the thing was as plain as walking! The bigger the thing you have to do the more simply you do it the better it will be done."
"It does not seem as though it were simple when you read it in the papers--eh? What do you think?"
"The papers be damned! Directly you gave me the office that she was going to take them with her to Windsor, I saw how I was going to get them, and who I was going to get them from."
"Eversleigh. Stow it--the train is stopping!"
The train was stopping. It had reached a station. The voices ceased. Mr. Paxton withdrew from his listening place with his brain in a greater whirl than ever. What had the two men been talking about? What did they mean by touching for a quarter of a million, and the reference to Windsor? The name which Mr. Lawrence had just mentioned, Eversleigh--where, quite recently, had he made its acquaintance? Mr. Paxton's glance fell on the evening paper which he had thrown on the seat. He snatched it up. Something like a key to the riddle came to him in a flash!